Ms Gillian Buckley:

Just three of the 144 loans are non-performing, which is phenomenal. People do not want to let things fail on their watch. They will move heaven and earth. As the Deputy said, we try to be flexible and work with the project if it does get into difficulty. During Covid, for example, we automatically gave a six-month payment holiday and extended that where it was required. We give payment pauses, extend loans and top them up. We try to work with the projects. They see us as a benign lender and we want to see ourselves in that. We understand the sector and we understand how important we are to our region. The vitality that community groups bring to rural Ireland, and to urban centres as well, is phenomenal. Anything we can do to help them we will do. As I often joke, when we give the money, we kind of half hold on to it, but that allows the projects to be more sustainable because it moves them on to another level. We talked about social enterprise. A lot of these community projects could move with that model, become real forces within their community groups and generate more employment on that sustainable model. Taking on a small degree of debt from the likes of us or Community Finance Ireland is the stepping stone into the next phase of their development.